The Plan (2)

"It's been a while, everyone."

Standing at the lectern was Dr. Kang Hyo-rin, the so-called genius of dungeon and monster research. It was the first anyone had seen of her since she'd vanished, claiming she had urgent business to attend to.

"Something unfortunate came up at home... so I'm only just getting back to class."

She must have had a genuinely rough time of it. Dark circles hung long and heavy beneath her eyes.

"But let's push through and get back on track! I still haven't finished grading last time's pop quiz, so today we'll be doing Strategic Chess."

"Aww..."

A collective groan rippled through the cadets. Strategic Chess was that kind of practical — the complicated kind students universally despised.

"Yes! I've been waiting for Strategic Chess!"

I blinked.

Ever since we'd formed a club together, I'd grown closer to Lucy and Rumi. They weren't sitting right beside me — the two of them sat side by side in the row ahead, and I sat alone directly behind them. I couldn't see their faces, but the faint scent of the twins drifting back through the lecture made it a seat where concentrating was next to impossible.

The reason Lucy's enthusiasm had thrown me was simple: Lucy was not a character built for academics.

Not every mage was a gifted student. There were things you simply had to memorize — magic circles, for instance — but for the most part, mages as a species left everything to talent. Lucy's whole character was the type to clutch her head and groan through every theory lecture. So why was she acting so confident? And about Strategic Chess, of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all things — the notoriously brutal one?

The holographic monitors mounted on each desk flickered to life, forming a chessboard-style field.

Wow. It's been a while. A real while.

Strategic Chess. One of Victoria Academy's practical exercises — a game-like system where you served as raid leader, commanding a party to clear a dungeon.

Back in school I'd thought it plenty of times: If only tests were just games. But games were only fun when you played them as games. If failing at a game meant you couldn't get into a good university — if failing at a game meant getting an earful from your mom — you might start thinking, Man, I'd rather just study instead of playing games.

Strategic Chess was the same way.

It was a turn-based game, like chess. You moved your party members one at a time, and victory came when you'd taken out every last one of the opposing monsters.

Even in the original game, Strategic Chess had a notorious reputation.

The exercise had three elements: the dungeon that served as the backdrop, the monsters playing the opposing role, and the raid party you controlled. Each of the three ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had over fifty possible patterns, assigned at random. Difficulty ranged from Easy all the way to Hellish.

Since this was the first session, you'd think she'd give us something gentle — but this was Dr. Kang Hyo-rin, the same woman who'd handed out a Hell-difficulty pop quiz last time and clearly enjoyed watching her students suffer. So who knew.

"All right, let's begin the practical."

The moment Kang Hyo-rin spoke, the hologram in front of my eyes began to shift.

"What is this."

It wasn't a combination with great synergy, but honestly, the difficulty wasn't that high. Banana Blood Monkeys were boss-type monsters — strong, but not particularly intelligent. Put the melee warriors up front, stack curses with the curse mages, and you could put them down without taking much damage.

"What the— this is super easy?"

"Yeah. Professor must've adjusted the difficulty since it's our first time."

"Rumi. I'll show you how it's done first, so watch closely, okay?"

"Okay, okay. You got this."

Hrm.

Remembering the look on the professor's face during that last pop quiz, I sincerely doubted it.

That was when another cadet shot a hand into the air.

"Huh? What the— Professor, my party members aren't listening to me!"

Dr. Kang Hyo-rin smiled as if she'd been waiting for exactly that.

"That's all right. The setting for this problem is that your party members are cowards. They won't follow any plan that doesn't look genuinely safe and free of danger."

"I— I'm sorry? What do you mean? What kind of plan has no danger?!"

"That's for you to figure out."

"......!"

"Well, I want to see your creativity and your command ability, so just relax. What matters isn't the result — it's the process. Try anything you like."

However lightly she said it, there was no way that didn't weigh on the cadets actually trying to solve the thing.

"You probably won't clear it anyway, but for a little motivation — I'll give bonus points to anyone who does."

Was that really something a person trying to motivate people would say?

That aside... this is Hell difficulty.

Even when I'd played the original, the whole point had been minimizing damage to your main force. That was how you scored high. That was how you stayed far away from expulsion. And if you wanted to take Elise's route, you had to beat her exam scores, which made it even worse.

"Uweh? Why won't you guys listen...?"

Lucy, who'd been so full of confidence, was issuing orders to party members who just sat there, vacant and unmoving.

"Aaagh! If you'd just push in there you could kill it — why won't you push in?!"

The other cadets were no different. Watching them scream and restart from the beginning while Dr. Kang Hyo-rin sipped her coffee was, frankly, a little terrifying. The more I looked at her, the more I was convinced she had a sadistic streak.

I took my time analyzing my own problem.

In that piece-of-shit eroge Sex Academy, you had to clear Strategic Chess at least five times just to advance the scenario. Every element changed every single time, so memorization was useless. But I had cleared every route, and I had cleared Strategic Chess more times than I could count. I knew the Banana Blood Monkeys inside and out.

Banana Blood Monkeys always appeared as a mated pair. Bananas were their staple food, so they were extremely wary of any outsider who touched them. There were infants in the nest — but you must not touch the infants. If the young died, the monkeys entered a berserk state and became far harder to take down.

"Mmm... yeah, this is doable."

Once I'd finished analyzing both my party and the monsters, I started moving my people. They wouldn't accept any order that wasn't safe, so I had five melee warriors terrorize the banana trees from a distance. They refused that at first too, so I told them to chop only five trees each and run immediately — and only then did they listen and head off to cut wood.

I took the remaining five melee warriors, five support mages, and five curse mages and advanced toward the monkeys' nest. A single support mage could throw a shield on three people, so the situation was relatively secure. We hid and watched the nest in silence, and before long the monkeys came charging out to deal with the outsiders attacking their banana trees. The melee warriors chopping wood would already have fled.

While the Banana Blood Monkeys had left the nest empty, I took the rest of the force inside and stacked curses on the still-young infant monkeys. Not the kind that threatened their lives — highly contagious curses that paralyzed the body. Then we got out of the nest fast and ran.

"Now I just run it at triple speed and it's over."

The curses lodged in the infants would slowly spread to the Banana Blood Monkeys themselves. The damn things had an unnecessarily fierce maternal instinct — they'd keep tending the infants until their own bodies could no longer move. That was when you sent the troops in and killed them. Raid complete.

The core of this strategy was waiting. After kicking it up to triple speed, you just had to keep waiting. Spend more than thirty minutes doing nothing but shuffling to an adjacent square, over and over, and the monkeys would stay put inside the nest while the curse slowly contaminated them. It took long enough that the score would take a hit, but it was the only method that finished the job for certain with zero casualties.

"Aaagh!"

A scream from up ahead made me jump. I looked up to find Lucy clutching her head in both hands, moaning.

"I spent all last week practicing nothing but Strategic Chess! How could you do this to me?!"

"..."

"Waaah. It's all ruined."

"D-don't cry, Lucy... it'll be okay."

While the two of them put on a tearjerker in the row ahead, my party members cut the throats of monkeys too curse-ridden to stand.

A triumphant chime rang out as the word flashed across my hologram, and Strategic Chess came to an end.

"Huh? Someone already cleared it?"

Dr. Kang Hyo-rin sounded genuinely surprised. The other cadets turned to look this way with something like awe in their eyes.

"Tsk. A promise is a promise. That's one extra point."

She said it like she regretted the whole arrangement, clicking her tongue. I sat there feeling oddly self-conscious — and then Lucy, who'd been face-down pretending to cry, whipped around. Her eyes went huge at the Victory! still floating in front of me.

"H-how?!"

"I got lucky. It was an easy one."

If you knew the Banana Blood Monkeys' traits, it was a straightforward problem. Of course, figuring out on your own that they'd keep clinging to their young even after the infants were hurt wasn't exactly easy.

"Give me some tips too... ah, no. This isn't the time. I just need to work harder!"

Lucy had been about to ask me for advice when her eyes met Dr. Kang Hyo-rin's. She flinched, spun back around, and threw herself into the problem with renewed fire.

Thirty minutes later.

"It won't work! It just won't! Who even made this thing?!"

Waaah—

I watched Lucy collapse face-down and start crying all over again, and thought, Good to know her 'bad at studying' setting hasn't changed.

After class, Lucy headed for the Nolza Club room.

She'd told Lee Hoyeon he absolutely had to come today — they were taking a new member. Instead, he'd said something about having something he couldn't put off, promised he'd come as soon as he was done, and taken off for the dorms at a run. Rumi had announced they were out of cookies and gone to buy more from the bakery.

"Aaaagh, I'm so bored."

Lucy had been restless and active from the day she was born. She'd even gone and founded a club — and then nobody came, which left her bored out of her mind. The news that a new member was joining had made her genuinely happy.

Knock, knock, knock.

"Yes~ Who is it?"

"Um, it's Felix."

"Ah! I'll get the door!"

Lucy opened it to find a platinum-blond boy standing there, his eyes as innocent as a child's.

"The others aren't here yet, so let's sit and wait."

"Y-yes."

Felix still seemed uncomfortable in the space. His eyes flicked this way and that before he eased himself down onto the sofa. Lucy, who had always been good with people, fussed over the timid boy and drew him into conversation.

"Yeah, yeah — our club is just three people. A guy named Lee Hoyeon, my little sister Rumi, and me."

"Lee Hoyeon... would that happen to be the one from the Student ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Council's PR department?"

"That's right. Our club has a Student Council officer in it, you know."

Lucy shrugged, her shoulders lifting. It wasn't much, but she was the founding club president, and it showed.

"Ah... so that's why nobody joins the clu— hhk."

"What was that?"

"Ah, it's nothing."

"No, I heard you clearly, so say it again. You know why nobody joins our club?"

Lucy looked at Felix with an uncharacteristic seriousness. He dropped his gaze like a boy who'd misspoken, and let out a long breath.

"You have to keep what I'm about to say a secret."

"Yeah. Don't worry. What is it?"

"The truth is... there are a lot of bad rumors about that Lee Hoyeon person."

"...Bad rumors?"

"The famous ones are about his relationships with women. The Student Council President, Professor Lim Sol, even Miss Elise from the same PR department — there are a lot of unsavory rumors."

"..."

"And there's a rumor someone saw him going to a motel with a classmate."

Lucy didn't judge people by rumors. She was the type who only believed what she saw with her own eyes. The Hoyeon she knew had started from a misunderstanding, but he was a kind, diligent cadet.

But that first misunderstanding. The accident where he'd touched Lucy's chest — what if it hadn't been an accident?

"Now that I think about it... almost everyone around Hoyeon is a girl."

It wasn't as though Lucy had no male friends of her own. But she had never once seen Hoyeon speak to another boy, except for a single male cadet named Kim Young-han.

"Right? I think that's why the female cadets won't join."

"...Maybe so."

Since the club had been founded, plenty of boys had approached after getting a look at Lucy and Rumi's bodies. Not once had a female cadet said she wanted to join.

"Well, none of it's confirmed. There were just rumors like that. Still — being in the same club as you, Lucy. I hope they all turn out to be nonsense."

"Yeah. Same."

Felix smiled at her as he said things that would have made Hoyeon blow a gasket if he'd heard them.

A chime sounded from Lucy's smartwatch.

"I can't believe there are rumors like that.... Anyway, Rumi and Hoyeon are both coming, so just wait here! I'll go meet them."

"Okay."

Lucy hurried out of the club room. Left alone, Felix dropped the smile and frowned.

"Doesn't seem like they're dating, from the looks of it...."

Even if Lucy and Hoyeon weren't a couple, Felix had at least assumed they were in that ambiguous, almost-together stage. He'd manufactured the false rumors himself, spread them, and delivered them to Lucy for the express purpose of driving a wedge between the two. But contrary to his expectations, they were just friends — so Lucy hadn't changed much at all.

He clicked his tongue and sucked on the drink sitting on the table.

"There's still plenty of time. I'll take it slow."

Lucy. She was the woman Felix the demon had fallen for at first sight. The woman who had driven him to do something as dangerous as infiltrating the academy. Being here now carried a fair amount of risk as well — but if he could have that captivating face and those full breasts, that much didn't matter.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Footsteps sounded from outside. Felix put the innocent face back on, set down the drink, and sat on the sofa looking appropriately nervous.

"Oh, it got cleaned up."

Hoyeon said it as he took in the club room.

"If you knew how hard Rumi and I worked cleaning, you'd be shocked. Hmph."

"Good work. You should've just messaged me to come help."

"Rumi said absolutely not, so what was I supposed to do~."

"But... if it weren't for you, Hoyeon, we wouldn't even have a club...."

"Hey. That kind of talk just makes it awkward, so you can stop now."

They fell into an easy, familiar conversation the moment they walked through the door. Felix had gone to all that trouble spreading rumors, and nothing was different. His stomach turned over, but he held it in and looked their way.

"Ah, right! We're thinking of taking him as a new member this time, so I called you to get your opinion too. What do you think? He looks nice, right?"

Lucy introduced Felix to Hoyeon.

The two of them registered each other for the first time. Their eyes met, and Hoyeon flashed a smile.

Lucy saw that look and fully expected something positive to come out of his mouth. The words that actually came out were nothing she had imagined.